I Wanna Be Your Lover (1979) 7/23/20

About once a week at Shenannigans in Eau Claire, WI, the disco where I worked as a DJ for the better part of 7 years (1976-83), our music director would drop off a stack of new releases to try.

Some became hits; others did not. That's the nature of the beast. But every once in a while, a new artist would release something that fooled me.

One song in particular was a head-scratcher. It had a good, funky beat—the sort of song that would usually keep people on the dance floor—even if they'd never heard it before. But when I mixed it in for the first time, it CLEARED the floor! So I filed it away.

Normally after all this time I wouldn't remember something like that. After all, in my career, I played a number of what I thought were “sure-fire” hits—only to find out they weren't!

This time, however, I was just a little bit ahead of history. As the weeks progressed, I learned the artist was from nearby Minneapolis, and the song was making its way up the charts to become a “Great Song of 1979!”

What made “I Wanna Be Your Lover” so great? In addition to being danceable with some great riffs, It was the first chart single for PRINCE!

Granted, it's not his best song, nor was it his biggest hit...but as 1979 turned into 1980, it went to #1 on Billboard's R & B chart, #2 on the Dance chart and #11 on the Hot 100.

Pretty soon, I put it back in my sets, the Eau Claire dance crowd realized what a great song it was, and instead of clearing the floor, they packed it!

And the rest, as they say, is music history!

“I Wanna Be Your Lover,” the first “Great Song by a Great Artist!”